Sunday, January 06, 2013

•Why Conservatives Should Applaud the Movies of 2012, Atlas Shrugged movie|There were plenty of right-leaning movies that arrived in theaters in 2012. In fact, my A-List feature from the December issue of Townhall Magazine counted down ten of the most conservative movies of the past year. Aside from such obvious fare as “Atlas Shrugged 2” and “2016: Obama’s America,” the list included several of the year’s highest-grossing films.

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

• • •Wishing You Capitalism on Earth, Atlas Shrugged|Capitalism|Individual Rights|In Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, the federal government takes over all private industry. Dagny Taggart is the heroine whose private railroad company becomes bound and regulated by the federal government. Taggart realizes that socialist public policy has caused her once cheerful employees to loathe her and each other. Taggart observes: “… she was both a slave and a driver of slaves, and so was every human being in the country, and hatred was the only thing that men could now feel for one another.”

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

• • •“Atlas Shrugged” Producer Talks About What Ayn Rand Meant to Him, Atlas Shrugged movie|Atlas Shrugged|Egoism|Paul Ryan|[A]lthough [Atlas Shrugged] has proven to be a beloved conservative novel, its story of individuals standing up against a powerful and unforgiving government was never brought to the big screen until last year. That was when the first film in a series adapted from the book was released nationwide. Now, over a year later, the sequel “Atlas Shrugged: Part 2”- which focuses on the middle portion of the story- arrives in theaters today. I recently had the chance to talk to producer John Aglialoro about the lessons he learned from the book, why the film isn’t aimed at politicians, and if there’ll be a part three.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

• • •Bringing Selfish Back, Atlas Shrugged|Capitalism|Egoism|Personal life|I think both Rand and rational Christians can agree that the goal of life is happiness, achieved by living morally on earth. Rand maintains that life ends at physical death and happiness is achievable on earth. Christians simply take a longer view on life. To achieve happiness, both can agree that one must embrace a “selfish” lifestyle of seeking one’s best interest in a moral and productive manner.

Monday, September 10, 2012

• • •Christianity is Compatible with Ayn Rand, Atheism|Atlas Shrugged|Capitalism|Egoism|Rand and her fictional heroes believe with almost religious zeal that there is no God—a belief that takes “faith.” For, it is impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt that God does not exist, just as it is impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he does exist. To say either with absolute certainty takes faith (rational yet unconfirmed belief). If it is rational for Rand to believe (without proof) that God does not exist, it is also rational for a Christian to believe that God exists. Since both atheists and Christians are rational, atheism is unessential to being a capitalist.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

• • •Where is John Galt? Part Two, Atlas Shrugged|Capitalism|Entrepreneurs must take action. Now. And by ‘action,’ I mean protesting the federal government’s unconstitutional taxes and regulations. Or, the guilt is theirs if the economy tanks. Luckily, entrepreneurs have two role models to help them develop action plans: John Galt and Steve Jobs. Last week, I wrote that in order to save our economy and culture we need more entrepreneurs to emulate Ayn Rand’s fictional hero in Atlas Shrugged, John Galt . Certainly, emulating Galt is a challenge as he is a fictional hero who seems larger-than-life. But it is hardly an impossible feat; the late billionaire co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, was a true-to-life John Galt.

• • •Where Is John Galt?, Atlas Shrugged|Capitalism|Individual Rights|Where is a man who can save us? A man of virtue and action who can rebuild our economy and culture? We must find a true-to-life John Galt. I think America’s best shot at economic recovery and restoring constitutional freedom is to nurture men and women who emulate the virtues of John Galt, a hero in Ayn Rand’s magnum opus novel, Atlas Shrugged. Galt is a man of unparalleled virtue, intelligence and action in a fictional U.S. economy that is eerily identical to the present-day U.S. economy.

Monday, August 06, 2012

• • •The 20 Best Quotes From Ayn Rand, Individual Rights|20) “Ask yourself why totalitarian dictatorships find it necessary to pour money and effort into propaganda for their own helpless, chained, gagged slaves, who have no means of protest or defense. The answer is that even the humblest peasant or the lowest savage would rise in blind rebellion, were he to realize that he is being immolated, not to some incomprehensible noble purpose, but to plain, naked human evil.”

Thursday, May 31, 2012

• •Alabama Fights a UN Land Grab, Individual Rights|Individual rights must take a backseat to community interests. Sound familiar? That’s probably because it’s been the ideology that American presidents have been agreeing to since 1992. Enter Agenda 21, the 40 chapter document from the United Nations that establishes environmental “principles” at local, national, regional, and international levels-and the object of Ayn Rand’s nightmare.

•Paul Ryan Schools Georgetown on How to Help the Poor, Ryan was greeted by a 50 foot banner asking the illuminating question, “Were you there when they crucified the poor?” That was accompanied by a letter from nearly 90 members of the faculty that already condemned his budget as a plan that “decimates food programs for struggling families, radically weakens protections for the elderly and sick, and gives more tax breaks for the wealthiest few.” [....] “In short, your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Monday, April 30, 2012

• •Why Your Doctor Secretly Hates Obamacare, Atlas Shrugged|Capitalism|Dagny Taggart is the heroine of Ayn Rand’s novel, “Atlas Shrugged.” At one point, Dagny asks a renowned medical doctor named Dr. Hendricks why he left the medical practice. He says: “I quit when medicine was placed under State control … Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquiring that skill [performing brain surgery]? …I would not let them [politicians] dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything—except the desires of the doctors. … Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it—and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.”

• • •Atlas Shrugged: Is American Business Going on Strike?, Atlas Shrugged|Capitalism|Everything happening today under Obama resembles the storyline of Ayn Rand’s famous book Atlas Shrugged. Rand prophesized a country dominated by socialists, Marxists and statists, where looters, free loaders and poverty promoters live off the productive class. To rationalize and justify the theft of the money and assets of business owners, the looter class demonizes the wealthy. Sound familiar?

Monday, October 31, 2011

Atlas Shrugged|Reference in title only.According to a CBO report, the top 1% of income earners saw a 275% increase in their inflation-adjusted, after-tax income between 1979 and 2007.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

• •Occupy Hollywood Not Wall Street, Atlas Shrugged movie|Capitalism|Think about it—when was the last time that Hollywood had a lead character who was a businessman who was a positive role model? What about the 2011 production of Atlas Shrugged? The limited-run movie about the importance of individual liberty and limited government interference in business? Oh, right—that was produced without the blessing of mainstream Hollywood, and supported and promoted in part by FreedomWorks, the Tea Party and Andrew Breitbart.

Friday, September 23, 2011

• • •Earn Black Belt Unemployment, Capitalism|When conservatives and libertarians find themselves without meaningful work—through no fault of their own—they feel distressed and mortified at the prospect of accepting temporary government unemployment assistance to get by. Ayn Rand lends philosophical clarity to this dilemma. In the June 1966 edition of The Objectivist newsletter, she addresses the ethics of accepting a wide range of government assistance. She contends that it is morally acceptable to take government assistance when the government unjustly appropriates excess taxes, private property rights and free market opportunities from individual citizens.